I am enjoying it thus far. The questing isn't bad at all. I really like the way they have a questhelper built in, which makes the quests extreemly easy to figure out/accomplish. The UI is really customizable by default, the problem is figuring out where to make most of the changes. Mostly if you ask in public chat people are willing to assist.

The graphics are really nice. I am running at 1920x1080 at around 35 - 60 FPS, depending on if I'm by a rift or not. There are ALOT of people running around right now, so yeah there is some latency and lag, but my latency never went over 175ms, nor did I ever disconnect. This is the vid card I am running (NVIDIA GTX 260) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814130433 and I have my video set to the High preset (Ultra is the highest, havent tried it yet).

As for the soul trees, I would have to agree with what somone else said about not using half the abilities that are available. It's almost too many options really. By level 6 you have all 3 callings available to you to invest souls in. The level cap is 30 right now and I think that gives like 40ish points to invest. I will be investing most if not all my points into a single tree as that seems to be the best use for them right now. I wish the beta would extend over the weekend to really give me more time to progress further. I was able to level a Warrior and Rogue to level 10 in about a total of 4-5 hours of play.

EDIT: The SS I took also aren't full size. Is there a way to upload the full size to photobucket? I did it real quick last night before going to bed so I didn't look into it too much.

Yes indeed, the map is amazing. You can show your raid group where you are headed, and by mousing over each person it shows their direct path. Mousing over rift-parties headed to towns, it shows the town they are headed, by marking an arrow between their current location and the town. Also, a spawning of a rift is absolutely AMAZING! The animations are well done, and you need to defend the towns as well as take to the offence to close each smaller rift individually!

I think the best way to describe them is that they are like the back side of a worm hole with a pillar of that element breaking out of space in the sky to spawn mobs and change the ground texture and screen color.

Rifts and Invasions defiantly make up for the typical and less attention grabbing quest system.

The game does not really seem to have any major negatives just that Its positives need to spread from the Rifts/Souls System into basic functions more.

For someone looking for something that is going to revolutionize the genre of MMOs or something new that you haven't seen before, Rift is not for you. What Rift is, is a solid generic fantasy MMO in the same vein as WoW with a few unique twists here and there to make it a slightly unique experience. Essentially, another 'WoW clone', but done right (from what I've seen at any rate.)

I did my first "dungeon" last night. I really liked it. It was a bit long, and there were wipes, but overall it was a satisfying experience. Just sucked that all the loot was all plate, the tank was happy though. I hope they get a dps/threat meter soon. It's really hard to tell how well you are doing without that gage I think. They use numbers as marks too, I thought that was dull, but helps in organization of focusing mobs.

As for the rifts, quick rundown: Rift spawns, and you go through 4-5 waves of mobs then one elite spawns at the end. You get rewards for closing rifts ranging from an epic (got one last night) to a planar thing that is essentially a token to trade for stuff. If you are close to the rift when it spawns, it's really sweet looking.

PVP is pretty interesting. The first one available is basically an odd ball (halo reference) type of game play. There is a relic in the middle. Somone picks it up and points start accruing to your team. While you hold the relic though, your life starts to "decay" meaning if you hold it to long, you will die. The key is turtle close to your spawn point and bottleneck the other team. So far, It's extreemly difficult to tell what kind of build other people are by just looking at them, class is pretty easy, but since there are so many variables, it makes the type of class nigh impossible to tell. I'm running a Sabtour/assasin/Riftblade build right now for pvp and I'm usually up there in the total damage.

My toons are on Keenblade Shard. Prettypunk lvl 20 Rogue - Guardian and then Warpunk lvl 16 Warrior - Defiant I made some other toons to test out builds to see if I like them, but so far the Rogue is the one I'm playing the most.

This is how the game looks on absolutely everything on full. On my (new) GTX570 with EVERYTHING on full, and 8xAA I get 17 fps. I drop it down to 2x for normal play getting around 40 FPS. The game looks UNBELIEVABLY beautiful! The pictures above are showing lots of different shtuff I liked while I was questing. The blurry one, is an un-oppened rift, and the earth/swirly one is an opened earth rift. The dark purple one is a death gate. I have no idea what the city that has purpleish tentacles is, but I assume its a city under the influence of the bad guy :d.

We had a long invasion day today. 4 Grand invasions in total, each spawning 4 large and about 30 smaller rifts. It really is a big deal, because if you lose out on a rift and invasion, you lose the quest hub untill you take back the quest hub. Granted, taking a hub is far easier than closing a gate, and can be done solo, its not as epic as closing a gate.

The 2nd region that is showing (the city-ish part is the last part of the first region). The grassland/highland/Scotland is absolutely amazing. The music is well done, the quests are nice, the general theme is awesome, and the whole area is overally extremely well done and polished, for a game still a month away from launch (I've seen games launch with more bugs than this beta version).

With that said, there are some stuff I don't like. Questing *can* be hard at times, meaning "chain duying with 0 chances of survival". I guess they will iron out these bugs soon. The whole rift under attack system is nice, but I can see it getting old after some time when you just want to do a quest, and the hub is under attack by a lvl 20 rift. Also, general movement feels slow. In the whole of the first area, spanning some 14 odd levels, there is no such thing as a flight path, or anything. You have a heartstone that you can set, but only in the capital city, which is on the edge of one of the maps. I now find myself in the 2nd region, next to the first, unable to go back and train despite being 3 lvl highers than when I came here, simply because I will have a good 10-15 min ride between the capitol and where I am now. In general moving on a mount is clumpsy. You get dismounted as soon as a mob touches you, and the mobs apply a +20% damage taken debuff if you're facing your back to them. Being dismounted and killed in under 15 seconds as a mail users, from lvl 14 mobs is not nice... Also, not so much of a smart move to plant 10 gazzilion mobs, in stealth, that can stun straight out of the capital city :s

Every single person there keeps asking me...YES, THERE IS A HORSE MOUNT VENDOR AS WELL!

Now, I know you might like the gazelle, but a black horse attracts much more attention, especially with seeing 1 horseman per 30 lama-riders

As for transport - yes, tedious, but actually even by running you go from the first small camp to the capital just for a few minutes of running, much faster than WoW locations. Second, in the 2nd area , in the middle of the map, there's the 2nd porticulum. You can teleport between every Porticulum, so you can just port back to the capital to train. But yeah, for like 2-3 levels, till you reach the camp with the porticulus, you can't train. (same for WoW in some aspects, tbh. Unless you reach the capital, you can't train some professions, which was annoying).

Rifts - I am already bored from them... A bit sad provided the game's called "RIFT" :/On the other hand, a big part of the players say they've been burned out from questing around lvl 20, while I just love it and want more and more of it. If they find the right balance between questing and RIFT-ing, would be great, and also the spawn points of the rifts. Right now, the 1st area was rift after rift, so many , that you just get overexhausted and bored from rifting. I didn't mind jumping to the occasional rift or two on my way to a certain quest in the 2nd area.

Game's beautiful, but I hope they optimize it a bit more for the launch.

I don't get the scoreboard for the rift events, though... What are these points, how do you get them, what are these gold, silver and copper crosses with the respective counters below them, what's the whole idea behind it, etc.

All in all, I still don't know what to do with that game...I both love and hate that it's 80% WoW. On the other hand WoW gets so boring after 6 years, atm logging in only for the couple of raid nights and then for 2-3 daily quests (as soon as I get the Dark phoenix I think I'll stop doing even JC dailies... Got 230k that should be enough for the whole expansion). Even if so WoW-similar, it's just a breath of fresh air from the boredom WoW has become from looking at the same textures same things for all those years. On the other hand, friends that I've made through the years will probably not play RIFT (but if I am bored of wow, what's the point in logging in for the friends, paying for a colorful skype/MSN is not too great). Don't think I'll have the time or the money to support playing and paying for both games either. *shrug*. Still thinking. Anyone else in the same boat?

Loras wrote:Rifts - I am already bored from them... A bit sad provided the game's called "RIFT" :/On the other hand, a big part of the players say they've been burned out from questing around lvl 20, while I just love it and want more and more of it. If they find the right balance between questing and RIFT-ing, would be great, and also the spawn points of the rifts. Right now, the 1st area was rift after rift, so many , that you just get overexhausted and bored from rifting. I didn't mind jumping to the occasional rift or two on my way to a certain quest in the 2nd area.

All in all, I still don't know what to do with that game...I both love and hate that it's 80% WoW. On the other hand WoW gets so boring after 6 years, atm logging in only for the couple of raid nights and then for 2-3 daily quests (as soon as I get the Dark phoenix I think I'll stop doing even JC dailies... Got 230k that should be enough for the whole expansion). Even if so WoW-similar, it's just a breath of fresh air from the boredom WoW has become from looking at the same textures same things for all those years. On the other hand, friends that I've made through the years will probably not play RIFT (but if I am bored of wow, what's the point in logging in for the friends, paying for a colorful skype/MSN is not too great). Don't think I'll have the time or the money to support playing and paying for both games either. *shrug*. Still thinking. Anyone else in the same boat?

As for the constant Rift spam, It's partially because there were a lot more beta invites this time around, and Rift spawns are partially decided by zone population. Also, I recall hearing somewhere(can't recall where) that the rift spawns were turned up for the Beta.

In pretty much the same boat. I have quite a few friends in WoW, but I'm honestly quite sick of it, and Rift is looking to be a nice alternative.

im looking forward to trying, a friend sent me a VIP code to use, its downloading now

wow is getting a lil boring and frusterating and when i wanna play a mmo, it not always wow i look to

then again that is why i play fallen earth too.....

Brekkie:Tanks are like shitty DPS. And healers are like REALLY distracted DPSAmirya:Why yes, your penis is longer than his because you hit 30k dps in the first 10 seconds. But guess what? That raid boss has a dick bigger than your ego. Flex:I don't make mistakes. I execute carefully planned strategic group wipes.Levie:(in /g) It's weird, I have a collar and I dont know where I got it from, Worgen are kinky!Levie:Drunk Lev goes and does what he pleases just to annoy sober Lev.Sagara:You see, you need to *spread* the bun before you insert the hot dog.

And alsoDaaaaamn!!! I was doing some weird achievement in the 2nd area (Stonefall or w hatever the name was), and in particular, climbing some mountain above a certain village. I climbed the wrong peak with some efforts to use the slopes, and I found some interactive mud pile that contained a bag. Inside the bag - an Epic 1-handed sword with awesome stats, and like almost double dps compared to my old sword (warrior tank here). Now, if they put some sort of interactivity like that in the final release, that'll make the world a much better place. I like!

Loras wrote:I don't get the scoreboard for the rift events, though... What are these points, how do you get them, what are these gold, silver and copper crosses with the respective counters below them, what's the whole idea behind it, etc.

Its the contribution you make, for every heal, point of damage/threat or other such ability that contributes towards the rift you get your little meter filled up.Grey is minimal to no contribution and you get no points for that.Bronze is minimal to average contribution and you get low points.Silver is average to high contribution and you get medium points.Gold is high to very high contribution and gets you maximum points.

Your overall reward from the rift event is based on how quickly the rift was completed and your overall contribution.

So I preordered it. Should get a beta code soon, although I have nfi if there'll be any beta left to enjoy. Even if I don't end up playing it it'll at the least be something pretty to look at for a month.

Still have a few of the codes free from the whole-wide-world-must-have-access giveaway last week end if you want access but not actually pre-order Levantine. You can probably still pick up a 25 use code at various places too.

How do the beta clients work? Do you have to download it again for each new beta phase or anything crazy like that? If you still have one of those codes, Tenaka, I might be interested in beta testing it. If not, no big deal. From what I've read here and on MMO-Champion's forums it seems like a pretty fun game. And I like fun.